


Locked

by MmArgent



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 10:10:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14235006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MmArgent/pseuds/MmArgent
Summary: Zoe Murphy wonders if her room will ever feel safe.





	Locked

Zoe Murphy wonders if her room will ever feel safe. She doesn´t remember when it did, if it did at some point in her life. The door is permanently locked, the key to it hanging from her keychain, making noise as she walks, a small reminder that her things are safe, even if she isn´t.

Connor doesn´t even have a door, but she has keys making harmonies with every step that she takes. Her parents say she is the responsible one, the reliable one. Connor used to say she was the good one, but that didn´t feel much like a compliment coming from him, more of an accusation wrapped in mockery.

She doesn´t remember signing up for any of those positions but the keys just kept pulling up. More responsibilities.

After Evan, she had to put a lock in her window. That didn´t stop the shattering glass and the noises against her walls, but her parents still insisted on it, a measurement to assure themselves that she was okay.

She never had been but she could pull the act. Always has.

Connor doesn´t have a door and the room doesn´t feel like his when she enters. Is hollow and clean, everything arranged. The chaos that was her brother is in a cemetery somewhere but his ghost was supposed to be there, in the piles of clothes and the never made bed. He is not and Zoe feels lost again, the image Evan put in her head and the memories anger has tarnish all fight inside her head.

She can´t lock his door.

She locks hers and stares at the ceiling. Mom said she could leave it open now, tears glistening in her eyes, and Zoe had wanted to get mad at her, to scream and shake her. There shouldn´t have been a lock in her room to begin with. There shouldn´t have been a brother pounding and threating her in the other side. There shouldn´t have been screamed matches and guitar strings hurting the pads of her finger while she tried to mute them. There shouldn´t have been but they had and now the cause was gone, gone and gone.

The room is never open, thought.           

Zoe knows her dad is going to talk to her soon, ask her to let the door open, at least to let her poor mother rest. His voice cracks the day he does so, when he explains to her that Connor can´t try to hurt her anymore.

_Then why it hurts when I remember, dad?_ She knows she can´t say it. They are all pretending but she knows she can´t say it. She nods and feel the edges of the key making dents against her palms.

Sometimes, she wished she could go back to the anger instead of the numbness. Angry at her parents for paying attention to Connor in all the wrong way. Angry at her classmates for making profits out of her brother´s death, his face haunting her along the hallways. Angry at Connor for leaving her with all the problems, with the grieving parents and the misplaced guilt. Angry at herself for not noticing, for being sorry to someone that had made her life a living hell, for the mixed emotions and the sorrow that tasted like rage. Angry at Evan, at last, for giving her false hopes. Angry at Alana, at Jared, at anyone and everyone that knew nothing of who truly Connor Murphy was and decided to play with the pretended version they had in their head.

Often, more than she is willing to admit, she misses him. The little moments her mother keeps trying to string along, the memories her dad hides from because it hurts a little too much, they all play in a loop in her head when she sees the frame in the kitchen, just above the fridge, that Connor had to hang because he was the only tall enough to reach it. He had rolled his eyes, made some side remark about the picture but had done it anyway, proclaiming that it would mean he didn´t have to do chores for a week. It had been silly and small but he had smiled at her, the real one, without the bloodshot eyes and the hunched shoulders, before leaving.

She misses how he never locked his door at night and how she used to believe she could protect her when she entered. How he was there.

Until he wasn´t.

When Zoe Murphy sits in the edge of the bed in her room, the door cracked the slightest open, she has a perfect view of her brother´s room. The room they found him in. The room she could have seen if she had not lock the door that day as soon as she got home. The room she could have entered and saved him. The room without the door that was hiding in plain sight. The room without the boy. The room without Connor. The room without her brother.

Zoe stands up and locks the door again, blocking the view.

She will try it for five more minutes tomorrow.


End file.
